Bum's Restaurant

According to lore, the Dennis family follows a tradition set half a million years ago when man first roasted a wild animal over wood. Most of humanity quit smoking pigs and other creatures over burning embers, but we just didnt never stop, says Larry Dennis, manager and pitmaster at Bums Restaurant in Ayden. His father, the namesake Bum, opened his place back in 1963, thus placing himself in the innumerable company of Dennis barbecue masters. Dennis history stakes claim to the nations first commercial barbecue establishment. In 1830, Skilton Dennis started selling smoked hog meat and cornbread out of a wagon. Founded a few decades earlier by another Dennis, the enigmatically-named Otter, the present town of Ayden begat more and more Dennises, most of whom seemed to possess, to quote a pamphlet from Bums, that gift with barbecue. Upon launching his own restaurant, Latham Bum Dennis made sure to serve up not just barbecue, but also the country-style food enjoyed in, and gradually disappearing from, local household kitchens. Bums remains one of the only barbecue stops in Eastern North Carolina that stocks a buffet table of freshly prepared vegetable sides, including: cabbage pastry, stewed rutabaga, black eyed peas, boiled potatoes, and collardsgrown in Bums own garden. Address: 566 3rd St Ayden, North Carolina 28513